We filmed in an external location at an office near our university. We had to go in well prepped so we could shoot as fast as possible as the office was loaned to us on a favor and we didn't want to stick around longer than needed. We also faced some challenges with lights as we wanted to shoot some shots with a bright window in the backdrop which underexposed the main subject of the shot. We ended up lighting the subject separately with whatever lights we found around the office and doing some complex corrections in post. The wardrobe was also a challenge to keep track of and we had about 5 sets of attires for everyone and a set of 5 shots for each scene. This actually ended up being too less to build up the tension in the film so we ended up reusing some shots and adding an audio track to make up for the lack of tension.

The second assignment was about motion capture. The techniques we used included Wong Kar Wai's famous motion blur and speed ramping. The concept behind the story of our film was inspired by theatrical play The Pillowman (2003).

We decided to make our own hacky costume for the pillowman as you can see in the film. It was challenging for the actor to be aware of his immediate surrounding as he was effectively blind inside the pillow but he managed to pull off all the shots  pretty effortlessly (thanks Alan!). We managed to capture some very nice blur shots thanks to our cinematographer and we decided to use those shots to bring out the disconnect of our subjects when they take their fatal final step. The raw plates from the camera didn't look blurry enough but our editor managed to enhance them quite a bit in post production. Sound for this film (and indeed in every film) played a key role in bringing out the emotions we wanted to convey.

The third assignment was all about camera motion. We used several standard cinema movements like the dolly and handheld. Our cinematographer also put together a funky transition in the last part of the film by doing a handheld swivel into the ground that looks quite good on film. The story revolves around a detective using a new age technology to solve a gruesome murder and its consequences.

We filmed one part of this film in a deserted tunnel under a road. The light was really low so we had to use an external LED to light up our scene. Since there was no power we had to use one that was powered off triple A batteries. That light runs out fast so we were on a tight time constraint. It was also hot and stuffy and we didn't want any of the actors/crew to stick around for too long. Editing this film we realized that we could have taken a few extra shots to make the flow more sensible. We managed to work around this by strategically placing the title card of the film between the scenes that needed a bridge. 

The final assignment was all about lighting. We used our prof's light kit to cast some shadows to add a more dreary effect to the scenes. We also played around with lights that were part of the scene for interesting effects. The story was inspired by an interesting story from the childhood of our teammate's mother.

We had a one take shot in this film. As with all long takes this one required a number of rehearsals before we got it right and on top of that the scene also involved dynamic mis-en-scene that we had to manually trigger. Audio in horror films is extremely important and so is pacing, we spent quite a bit of time editing trying to get it right. We felt as a team that the scare at the end could have been better and we took that away as a learning point. You would have also noticed the uncommon film format we adopted. A film-noir color scheme with only the color red showing through and also a dynamic aspect ration. The black bars close in to signify that our subject was being trapped.